If anyone does a 16x burn please include the time it took to burn as burning at 16x and having a burntime between 6-7 minutes is more equivalent to a 12x burn.

With SolidBurn and WOPC enabled using BSLB fw, the DW1640 16x burns take a longer time than the DW1620, averaging around 6 mins 5-10s for 4480MB capacity burns. So 6 mins+ 16x burns with DW1640 aren't exactly uncommon unless you deactivate SB +/- WOPC.

And this isn't exactly a breakneck speed challenge thread too unlike nealh's.

I have some questions on Solidburn learning curve.

When you have it learn a media, you have it write at a certain speed, say 8X WOPC OFF
Then on the second burn, you use 12X WOPC ON.

The question is : what does it learn from the two burns ?
How to write at 12X WOPC ON, because it's the last it has learned ?
Or does it now know how to optimize both 8X WOPC OFF and 12X WOPC ON ?

The following question is : if you successively burn a bad batch of media and then switch to a good batch, what does it recall from the experience ?

Cannot sleep before finfing some light in this essential pursuit ;-)

Thank you in advance to the SB gurus of his thread !

MacClipper,

Very nice indeed.

Maxell 8X -R MIJ, oversped to 16X.
Didn't burn at 16X though.. ended at 12X, with a burntime of 7:13

Another LG ProdiscR03 8x@16x, nicer burn with higher QS of 95 this time,

I've been wondering the same thing regarding all the above.

HeHz..
X'mas came early and I got myself a BenQ 1640 today.

Mitsubishi 2x DVD-R with DW1640 (BSLB)
Selected 12x but actual speed was 8x
Was completed in 9mins++

Same setting I run mine...285fsb.

Interesting questions, tried getting answers to similar questions from BenQ themselves but didn't get any answers too. Hope you have been getting your sleep though.

MacClipper
Thank you four your interest and for asking Benq.
I soppose that the exact way how Solidburn works is part of the house secrets and cannot fully disclosed. We would expect some rules to apply when using it though.

As substitutes, I'll try to stick to the following and see what happens :

- If you have Solidburn learn different batches of the same media with vastly varying quality, the result may be erratic. It is better to stick with the same batch/brand and clean the eeprom when you change.
- Speed used will be kept as constant as possible for SB not to be mislead. I read on the other thread that SB only learns for the ertified speed of the media. Not sure how this applies in case you use different speeds with one media
- In general, to think of SB as a person to whom you want to inculcate rules. Thus, to make the rules the simplest possible to ensure understanding and compliance.

These will help me sleep anyway ;-)

Tried a Philips branded RITEK-R03 @ 12X speed.
Didn't dare to burn a full disc though, but next time...

IMHO, the 1640 is one awesome burner...I have a batch of TY02 using stock BSLB with SB on, WOPC off, OS on..I burn at 12x...time hits about 6 min 4 secs...QS scores of 97/98 with low PIE and PIF generally between 100-200...I did get a 98 with PIF of 90

Now while this is not a true 16x burn....it was pretty close to 16x speed of my 1620(5:56-6min @16x and the TY02 on my system had PIF of 800-1000)

if burned at 12x wopc off on my 1620 PIF had wide range typically around 300 with a burn time at 5:56-6 min...so even at 12x wopc off 1640 vs 1620 ...BenQ clearly improved burn quality...I am truly amazed and impressed


They do need to iron some issues with Qsuite and software issues

I burn all my 8x media ay 12x with fantastic results. I only use Taiyo Yuden Verbatim and Maxell media and turn WOPC off. Solid burn ON. Overspeed On.

Maxell 8X DVD+R (MIJ), MID: MAXELL 002
Burner: DW1640 with BSLB firmware
Solid Burn: on, Over Speed : on
1. @12X, time: 6:29
2. @16X, time: 6:02

RICOH branded RICOHJPN-R01-02 4X +R burned at 12X. OverSpeed ON.
In fact I was trying to burn it at 16X speed but WOPC (or SB?) has kicked in quickly at just over 12X speed so it turned out to be a 12X burn... Burning time 6:32 using ImgBurn ( ).

With regard to SolidBurn, I too emailed BenQ (UK) but have had no response. The answers we want are hardly trade secrets, there is already a small amount of information in the press releases, and its about time BenQ/Philips helped us out here. I must have burnt at least 30 discs in search of the truth, and I'm sure many others have too. What a waste. All of us wasting time and money, when a bit more info would help everyone out. I guess that the number of people who are interested though numbers in the hundreds, as opposed to the numbers sold which must be in the tens of thousands, so once again we represent a small (unimportant) minority.

The biggest stumbling block to finding definitve results is that media, even within a spindle, varies to quite an extent, so one is never sure whether a different result is down to the behaviour or the media or the drive.

The only thing that I think I have established is that write speed is determined solely by the first disc used as the learn burn. I have used 3 different Verbatim +R x16 MCC004's (Made In India, Made in Taiwan - Prodisc, Made In Taiwan - CMC), all which have different characteristics. The FE/TE on my MII is pretty poor, and results in a x8 strategy, whereas that on the CMC is good, and results in a x16 strategy. If you do a learn burn with the poor discs, no matter how much good stuff you feed it, the strategy never changes from x8. If you do a learn burn with a good disc, no matter how many poor discs you feed it, the strategy always stays at x16, even though the resulting PIE/POE/QS are very poor.

I have found little difference with the better discs between doing the learn burn at x16, then dropping down to x12 for subsequent burns, and doing them all at x12.

I would say that it takes about 4 burns in total for SB to settle down. CD's have a laser power calibration area that is written to and checked for each individual disc, so would be surprised if DVD discs did not have the same. But I find this confusing, as if SB just adjusted the strategy speed on the first disc, that and the laser calibration should be sufficient, and you would see no improvement after the first learn burn.

I have noted that sometimes the learn burn is actually very good, and second and third burns not so good. I assume this is more to do with disc to disc variation.

I am also curious to know how SB works in conjunction with WOPC. If WOPC is continuously making adjustments, how does SB learn from the writing process?

Maybe one of the cdfreaks demi-gods that have a working relationship with BenQ/Philips can try to extract some more info. My list of questions would be:

What writing parameters does SB influence?
To what extent does SB learn over multiple discs?
To what extent does WOPC influence SB learning?
To what extent does the write speed influence SB, and does it make any difference if the learning write speeds are different to the subsequently used write speeds?
To what extent does the data size of the learning burns affect SB function?
Is the learning burn for known media based on default parameters or the known parameters for the media?

Media: Plextor DVD-R 5er #000098 (from nierle.de)
Mediacode: TYG02
Burner: Benq DW 1640 FW BSLB
Burnspeed possible: 16x
Burnspeed selected: 12x
WOPC: ON
Solidburn: ON for known media/ON for unknown
Overspeeding: ON

I did a little testing.

1) Cleared EEPROM
2) Took a brand new plextor pack and burned them one after the other with the same settings (see above).

Not much improvement, or?

Next time I'll try with WOPC-OFF

Benq says that SB only improve the quality with media that´s not well supported or unsupported, like rare media that´s not avaible everywhere.

Media from big manufacturers are good supported, so you don´t have improvement from SB.

Jamescooly had great results with Plextor DVD-R and Sb-On, I tried to do the same...

I wish we could overspeed with solidburn off without changing any write strategies!

I´m not sure how to do..

If you overspeed a 8x to 16x, how could you have the same strategy? Fact is that at 16x you have a higher laser-power than at 8x, so the strategy must be changed

I'm not seeing this behaviour at all, I've burned at least 250 dvds now (MCC03 RG20), with speed set to either 12x or 16x, WOPC on, SB on/on, and IIRC I've had 4 or 5 burns that SB limited to 8x while the others mostly burned at 12x (including the ones set to 16x, few burned at 16x, most at 12x).
Comparing the resulting scans, I'm actually very pleased with SB's ability to predict quality and select optimal speed.

Q.

You cannot compare the Plextor TaiyoYuden discs to any others even unbranded Tys from Rima becuase Plextor gets the best batches from Ty, I have try it time and time again, I believe that Plextor gets first stamped discs usually only sold to Video Game Companys.

@Qyngali,

I bow to your greater numbers. I have only burnt about 75 of one particular MID (MCC 004) so far. Could it be that WOPC is limiting the speed of the burns, and not SB?

All I can say is that amongst 5 batches of MCC 004 discs, I found one batch that had a particularly poor TE/FE prescan, and one that had a particularly good one. Clearing the SB settings, "learn burning" a poor one, then burning 5 consecutive good ones led to 5 x8 burns, whereas doing the reverse with "learn burning" a good one first lead to 5 x16 burns, which were of pretty poor quality.

Once again, I would ask BenQ/Philips to offer a little more helpful advice on SB. All we are doing is trying to get the best out of our burners, not nick their ideas. It is not good enough to just say to use SB only for unknown media, given the huge variability between batches of even "quality media".